it is a problem. it's a bigger problem if they know the difference than if they don't. if you describe yourself as a vegetarian--not mostly vegetarian or vegetarian at lunch or vegetarian except for tuesdays and weekends, but vegetarian--and then you say that you eat meat, you are trying to convince either yourself or others that "vegetarian" can be used to denote "eats some things that aren't meat."

I don't agree, for the reasons I pointed out above. Someone who says they regularly attend church when they almost never attend church is probably not trying to convince you that "regularly" can mean "rarely." They're just ignoring the inconvenient circumstances of their own lives that interfere with their own self image. I suspect something similar is going on with non-vegetarian vegetarians.

Quote:

whether it's the result of delusion or indifference, that constitutes an attempt to create a new definition of that word, and it's no good, because a word for "sort of vegetarian some of the time" has already been humpty dumptied, and people should take advantage of it. *snaps ruler*

Well, if you're talking about 'flexitarian', that word was coined, not Humptily Dumptied.

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 5877Location: United States of New England

this could cross very easily into the vegan pet peeves thread that vegans can get served fish and cheese for dinner because people muddy the meaning of the word. (cause fish and chese goes grrrrrreat together!)

whether it's the result of delusion or indifference, that constitutes an attempt to create a new definition of that word, and it's no good, because a word for "sort of vegetarian some of the time" has already been humpty dumptied, and people should take advantage of it. *snaps ruler*

Well, if you're talking about 'flexitarian', that word was coined, not Humptily Dumptied.

oh, did you mean that "flexitarian" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument"? i was thinking of it as a portmanteau.

your stance reflects more sympathy than i'm able to muster. people who want me to think they regularly attend church probably won't tell me that they never attend church. i don't think "vegetarian except" is necessarily the same, mostly because few non-vegetarian vegetarians care to hide their non-vegetarian habits (the ones i've known, at least). if they tell me they're vegetarian, they want me to think they're vegetarian. if they follow up by saying, "but i eat chicken and stuff, and sometimes hamburgers, if i'm out," they still want me to think they're vegetarian, but they are no longer trying to convince me that they are vegetarian in any way that i would understand. they keep using that word, but i will never think it means what they think it means. i doubt i'll ever really know what they think it means.

fee wrote:

anyone know which survey they were talking about?

i can't find it; the guardian article links to a 2002 time article as the source, but that time article just says "a survey." time conducted its own poll about this, but i don't think those numbers are from that survey.

_________________"rise from the ashes of douchebaggery like a fancy vegan phoenix" - amandabear"I'm pretty sure the moral of this story is: fork pants." - cq

I have a friend who is vegetarian except that she occasionally eats bacon (which, ew - I know they say bacon is the gateway meat, but I always hated it). She calls herself "baco-vegetarian," which I find hilarious in a good way.

The reason for the widespread but mistaken belief that America is rapidly going veg is the mismatch between what people say they eat and what they actually eat. Take a 2002 Times/CNN poll on the eating habits of 10,000 Americans. Six percent of the individuals surveyed said they considered themselves vegetarian. But when asked by the pollsters what they had eaten in the last 24 hours, 60% of the self-described "vegetarians" admitted that that had consumed red meat, poultry or fish the previous day. In another survey, the United States Department of Agriculture randomly telephoned 13,313 Americans. Three percent of the respondents answered yes to the question, "Do you consider yourself to be a vegetarian?" A week later the researchers called the participants again and this time asked what they had eaten the day before. The results were even more dramatic than the Times/CNN survey: this time 66% of the "vegetarians" had eaten animal flesh in the last 24 hours.

The reason I say unfortunately is because Herzog goes through the motions of attempting to objectively analyze vegetarianism, but doesn’t ever budge from the prevalent ideology of animal use.

With that said, his sources are accurate, he’s just comfortably nested in the cultural normative no matter how much he may agree with many of our claims.

Do you think the people who say they are veg but ate meat the day before are really trying to be veg but having a hard time? That could somewhat explain the discrepancy - the day they take the survey is Day 1 of being veg?

I'm going to have my 7 year veganiversary in March. It hasn't been as complicated for me as all these articles seem to indicate.

I' first went vegetarian at 15, and Im coming up on 6 years vegan, and this has been my experience as well; in fact, the only "challenges" I've faced have been the result of being someplace (restaurants, airports, the occasional professional or social event) where the concept of foodstuffs that don't include animal products is apparently completely foreign. As far as shopping, cooking, eating, drinking, clothing, etc. go, it's been perfectly easy.

Tofulish wrote:

Or course if you use the definitions in the article, I'm a lifelong vegan.

It makes me feel so much better to know that all those BLTs I ate as a child have retroactively made me even more vegan than I realized!

Do you think the people who say they are veg but ate meat the day before are really trying to be veg but having a hard time? That could somewhat explain the discrepancy - the day they take the survey is Day 1 of being veg?

Yeah, you'd have to do a study on the reasons self identified vegetarians may eat meat to really speculate why that number is so high. Could be that they're new, or struggling, or felt pressured, or didn't realize until it was too late (i.e. beef broth in otherwise vegetable soup) on top of the ever so annoying "I'm vegetarian, but I NEED to eat meat once a week" type.

_________________I was really surprised the first time I saw a penis. After those banana tutorials, I was expecting something so different. -Tofulish

Well, I guess those "vegetarians" are like those congressmen who call themselves "monogamous" and "straight"...

I also generally don't care about cheating in private - go ahead and call yourself a vegetarian and eat chicken and cheese pizza whatever at home, your commitment to veganism is your commitment and not mine to police. But when you do it in public, it makes things harder for those of us who then have to explain to a chef catering a huge event that they need to make you something to eat that doesn't have butter or fish in it, because you were promised a meal and you can't really just sit through a 3 hour event pushing non-vegan food across your plate and nibbling on dry rolls.

I will say that I generally describe Leela as being a vegan kiddo, but in group situations where people are throwing around a ton of NV food, I just can't police all the food she takes in. I limit myself to actually stopping her eating meat, and obvious cheese, but I can't always stop her eating baked goods or snacks with incidental dairy or egg.

And then I have to ask if its better for people to see her as a healthy, happy vegan kiddo than as a vegetarian. I have had so many people come to me and ask about raising vegan kids, and I think my advice helps them cut out a lot of animal products from their diets.

_________________My oven is bigger on the inside, and it produces lots of wibbly wobbly, cake wakey... stuff. - The PoopieB.

That article isn't nearly as infuriating as their recent article accusing vegans of starving people in Boliva because we are eating quinoa and driving up the price for peasants. Also, our love of soy, according to the Guardian, is deforesting South America. It is my understanding from friends in the UK that the Guardian borders on being a supermarket rag.

I don`t get the logic of the asshat who insists that the word "vegetarian" can mean whatever he wants it to mean, and to hell with everyone else's definitions.

I wonder if he'd feel the same if he encountered a "doctor" who "needs" to "examine" his prostate?

_________________Yay, and verily he said unto them, "Eat this nooch for it tastes kind of like cheese, and drink this kombucha for it is awesome. And don't be a vegan hating douche because no one likes an asshat." - DancesWithTofu

It is my understanding from friends in the UK that the Guardian borders on being a supermarket rag.

Actually, the Guardian is probably the best quality left-wing mainstream broadsheet in the UK at the moment, but that doesn't stop it from publishing some pretty stupid shiitake from time to time.

_________________"Your mother was a superstitious hamster, and your father smelled of elderberry (right before he died of an untreated infection). Now go away, before we taunt you with your credulous magical thinking a second time!" - Desdemona